


Remember the Vir Tanadahl

by CopperCaravan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Fenera Mahariel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 19:51:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4492497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan





	Remember the Vir Tanadahl

They are small. They are tiny arms and legs and hands groping at the Keeper’s skirts and begging for extra honey and pulling each other’s hair.

Mahariel has been caught—she’s not as quick as he is. Yet. But in time, she will outrun him.

They’ve been putting honey on Fen’Harel again. A grave offense, Paivel has told them far too many times. So Mahariel must sit alone. “For ten minutes, da’len. You must respect our traditions. You must learn to...” But even the hahren was young in his time, so he rests on a seat by the fire and pretends to sleep as Tamlen inches toward the captive, her fearless Dalish hunter come to rescue her from her prison. _In yielding, find resilience. In pliancy, find strength._

He holds her tiny wrist in his tiny hand and they run—fearless and fearful at once of getting caught.

“Ar lasa mala revas!” he squeals, proud that he can be her hero.

...

They are not small anymore.

The beast is felled and she is proud—so proud—of her friend. He has earned his vallaslin today. He is one of the People, a hunter, proud and fearless. (But she had always known that.)

But the kill is not clean and the beast suffers, thrashing and bleeding and crying to be freed. She could cry for the pain she sees, for the necessary cruelty of their hunt, and for the look on his face. _Strike true,_ and he had. _Do not waver,_ and he hadn’t. _And let not your prey suffer._

“Ar lasa mala revas,” he whispers, his knife drawn across its throat.

Though they must learn to kill, they will not learn to be cruel.

...

She feels smaller than she was before.

This shemlen temple and its shemlen keeper think to offer her a kindness. It is so cold here, though they tell her a fire burns forever inside.

He was gone, they’d told her. Forever out of her reach.

He is not here. Though it looks like him and sounds like him and speaks like him, she knows: it is a lie. Not a kindness, but a cruel deception.

“Ar lasa mala revas,” it says and she knows it isn’t true.

But even so, she holds the trinket close to her heart.

_Respect the sacrifice of my children. Know that your passing shall nourish them in turn._

She curses the ashes—the miracle dust that will mend a human lord and a human land and a human family. Where are the ashes of Shartan? Where are the ashes of the elvhen to cure her heart and bring her fearless Dalish hunter back from the Beyond?

...

The world has grown around her—it so large and she so small.

So many lies have been told. Soft lies, delicate things meant to ease the pain. _He is gone. We will not meet again. Ar lasa mala revas._ They are the sound of her pulse, the beat of her heart, want and need and sorrow.

 _Always loved you._ The only truth left.

But now he has gone from her again.

A song, he’d said. And she knows the twisted keening well. But she cannot bring him back and she cannot go with him. So she sings him another song, a gentle song, and tells him she loves him too.

_Remember the ways of the Hunter and I shall be with you._

“Ar lasa mala revas,” she whispers to the newly turned soil.


End file.
